WOOP, there it is.

Oct 16, 2018
• HabitGrams

WOOP. Sounds like a dumb acronym from business class, right? Well, it actually represents a really awesome Physiological technique that can empower and motivate you in new ways to achieve your goals. It is also one of the concepts we are incorporating into Habitgrams, but I’ll talk more about that in another post.

WOOP stands for Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan.

I’ve always been a fan of meditation. I simply see meditation as mental exercise… literally. We know that neural pathways get stronger with repetition so it only makes sense that if we purposefully set our minds to repeating a certain pathway it will strengthen that path. In my mind different meditations are just ways of accessing different paths.

Our usual definition of meditation is usually quite narrow and almost universally of Eastern descent. Most of the time I hear people talking about meditating, they are speaking of mindfulness, loving kindness, or vipassana. The human mind is one of the most complex structures in existence, so why is our view of exercise for it so narrow?

These are all great ways to meditate, but to me things like prayer and visualization are just as valid as meditation techniques as those mentioned above. And that is where something like WOOP comes in.

The reason I brought all that up is that I want you to understand that WOOP is an exercise. You have to actually do it if you want your motivation to get stronger. Just reading through it or understanding won’t help you.

Now lets get our WOOP on. Here is a quick overview of the method:

Wish: First identify a wish, or any goal that you would like to focus on.

Outcome: Now imagine for two minutes what the outcome of that wish would be if it were to become true.

Obstacle: Next take two minutes and focus your attention the obstacles that are standing in the way of your wish. Study them in detail.

Plan: Lastly, take a minute and plan what you can do to make that wish a reality.